Policy

A walrus female and pup on an ice floe in the Chukchi Sea, June 2010. Photo: Sarah Sonsthagen/USGS
 
Oceanographers Sylvia Earl and Paul Dayton think it’s a bad idea, as do more than 500 other scientists and numerous environmental groups: energy development in the remote, often ice-choked waters off northern Alaska.
 
It’s a sentiment Audubon shares, and the organization has made it super easy for you to make your voice heard: Click here to tell the Interior Department the Arctic Ocean should be off-limits to drilling. Hurry—the deadline is 11 a.m. Eastern tomorrow, February 8.

Photo: Lori Oberhofer, National Park Service

Since 2000, the presence of invasive Burmese pythons has been documented as a growing danger in the Everglades. Yesterday, pythons became big news when the US Geological Survey released a report documenting just how much damage pythons may have caused.

President rides a ferry from Dauphin Island, Ala., to Fort Morgan, Ala., past a natural gas rig in 2010. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Just days after the President tackled natural gas, oil, and the environment in his State of the Union address, the Obama administration today laid out his “Blueprint to Make The Most of America’s Energy Resources."

The President will travel west to promote the plan, starting the day at a UPS facility in Las Vegas, a White House press release states, to discuss the importance of America’s workforce in increasing the country’s homemade energy. The President will then travel to Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, to further discuss his administration’s plans to promote energy security.

The 2012 State of the Union address. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Obama spent almost seven minutes of his hour-plus State of the Union last night—about 9% of the speech—discussing energy and the environment, more specifically oil and natural gas and clean energy.

“Over the last three years,” he said, “we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.” Pause for applause. “Right now—right now,” he continued, “American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years. That’s right, eight years. Not only that, last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past 16 years.” Pause for more applause.

Map: Peter Hoey

President Obama announced yesterday his decision to deny a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried 700,000 barrels of crude oil a day from northern Alberta in Canada to refineries in the states, extending to the Gulf Coast in Texas.

For the next two decades there will be no new uranium mining claims on public lands around the Grand Canyon National Park, a move that will protect more than one million acres, the Obama administration announced yesterday.

Three decades of federal ethanol subsidies ended on January 1st without much of a fight from supporters. The reason: Soaring prices thanks to a mandate that an increasing amount of ethanol be mixed into gasoline.

[Click on the images above to get to previous blog posts on the subjects. Photo: Georgia Pecan Commission, Map: Peter Hoey.]

A few stories we recently covered on our blog—about the payroll tax bill including provisions related to the Keystone pipeline, and earlier in November, about a pecan shortage—are popping up again. Click through for a look at how they’ve changed since we wrote about them last.

Talks held in Durban, South Africa to negotiate a global accord on climate regulations ended last Sunday, nearly two days after they were scheduled to conclude, resulting in an agreement—surprisingly—between developed and developing countries.

Map by Peter Hoey

Update, 12/19/11: A two-month extension of the payroll tax cut passed the Senate on Saturday, and with it, a provision that forces President Obama to decide about the Keystone XL pipeline within 60 days and allows “any changes to the pipeline route to bypass the National Environmental Policy Act, which subjects major federal projects to review,” according to The New York Times.

Check back later today for more details and links to additional news stories.
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The Keystone XL Pipeline is back in the headlines, as news of its inclusion on yesterday’s House-passed payroll tax bill spread.

We’ve covered the unfolding drama of this pipeline in our print pages and online, on our blog. In last year’s “Crude Awakening,” writer Barry Yeoman looked at the environmental cost of mining Alberta’s tar sands. Earlier this year, columnist Ted Williams detailed the history and future of the 1,700-mile pipeline, in a piece called “Tarred and Feathered.” And when the State Department stalled plans for moving forward in favor of more research about the environmental impact, senior editor Susan Cosier blogged about this decision.